someonelse:justtray: What's the countdown before the outrage that we shouldn't call it Obamacare anymore now that it is constitutional? I doubt we go a week before the Right Wing hypocrisy comes full circle and starts complaining about how it shouldn't be called that.

The more people start actually paying attention to what's in this program (and many people are somehow just doing this now), the more Republicans will regret dubbing it "Obamacare." I find that hilarious.

Nah, they'll just start saying that Obama created the Obamacare label to feed his giant ego. When it comes to cognitive dissonance, nobody can beat the GOP.

Angry Drunk Bureaucrat:Thunderpipes: Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: Thunderpipes: 26 states can tell Obama and the Feds to suck it now, and they will.

Oh yeah, the States just love turning away Federal money.

Read the ruling, moron. Feds cannot withold money if states don't expand their Medicaid. That was the ruling. They cannot be penalized and will retain what they have. They just don't need to accept a while bunch of new people and be saddled with the burden. Big win. Obamacare was counting on this use of force to drum up money.

Again: the States just love turning money away. "Oh, you're going to give us more money for a new program?.. no, no, we're fine... we'll just sit here with our thumbs up our butts until our constituents find out we're leaving money on the table."

/It makes for great political grandstanding, but ultimately the States never refuse this kind of money even if there are strings attached.

Wellll... don't be so sure about that. That stupid Adam Walsh sex offender act is only in force in like a half dozen states, because the rest of them basically looked at the cost of enforcing it vs. the amount of money the government was going to "penalize" them, did the math, and figured they were better off getting penalized.Also see the Real ID Act kerfuffle. Something like half the states have opted out of it at this point, penalties be damned, because it's just not worth the hassle to them.

david_gaithersburg:Starting in 2014, the fine for not carrying insurance would be $95 a year or 1 percent of a person's income, whichever is greater. In 2015 that would jump to $325 or 2 percent of income and in 2016 the fine would be $695 or 2.5 percent of income.

2.5% What a coinkidink, the average American is also that same amount away from being homeless. Popcorn anyone?

Isn't there also a provision to subsidize those costs for low income folks?

Thunderpipes:Weird, Obama stated over and over this is not a tax. Now he argues it is.

At least they shot down the forced Medicaid expansion. That will throw a big wrench into his plans. 26 states can tell Obama and the Feds to suck it now, and they will.

Still scary. Means Congress can regulate your behavior via taxes. Vote Republican? Obama can impose a tax on you. Buy an American car? Obama can impose a tax on you. Christian? Obama can impose a tax on you.

Now liberals, if we get a Republican advantage, how about we implement a tax on the unemployed? No job? Fine, pay a tax. I know you think you just won, but you just screwed everyone equally with another erosion of individual rights.

Sir Vanderhoot:AmazinTim: NowhereMon: Suck it cons, suck it long and hard

You must mean suck it everyone, now we'll never fix health care. We'll just keep patching scabby band-aids onto the issue, just like this bill.

I was really hoping it would get struck down, then force a complete overhaul single-payer plan. Make health insurance companies obsolete completely.

Oh well. Maybe in a few decades we can join the rest of the civilized world.

You're a riot. You were hoping that the ACA would get struck down so that we can deal with this bullshiat of an insurance system while Congress dukes it out for single-payer for the next hundred years. Unconsciable. The ACA is better than this current fark up of an insurance system.

david_gaithersburg:Has anyone here ever opted to purchase the COBRA offered by their employer? Bwahahahaha! Its now THE LAW suckhars.

As a matter of fact, Yes, I have. Disney (WDW) offers some of the cheapest premiums of any employer that is not the Federal Government. I can't remember the exact amount, but damn, was it cheap!! Most of the time, when you are offered COBRA, you pay the full amount and then discover how much your employer has been kicking in for you. I can only assume that because of how many employees they have, and they are unionized, the premiums are so cheap that Disney (WDW) doesn't chip in at all.

A+++++ Will do again.

But, yes, I know what you are getting at; COBRA is an unaffordable option for someone that is no longer employed.

HeartBurnKid:someonelse: justtray: What's the countdown before the outrage that we shouldn't call it Obamacare anymore now that it is constitutional? I doubt we go a week before the Right Wing hypocrisy comes full circle and starts complaining about how it shouldn't be called that.

The more people start actually paying attention to what's in this program (and many people are somehow just doing this now), the more Republicans will regret dubbing it "Obamacare." I find that hilarious.

Nah, they'll just start saying that Obama created the Obamacare label to feed his giant ego. When it comes to cognitive dissonance, nobody can beat the GOP.

muck4doo:I'll say it. As a Conservative, yes, I'm not happy with this, but it isn't the worst news in the world. I hope this plan works now that it has been given the okay.

Thank you. I hope it does too. It's called compromise by all parties to make it better, not throwing it out or shooting it down because a certain black man was in office. Because that's what it has looked like to me. I mean, it was the GOP's plan, and they were butthurt because Obama decided to gun for it. But that's in the past, I really do hope everyone just gets down to making shiat work.

I won't praise our health care system, don't get me wrong. I'd say your system is definitely superior in quality and wait times. I'm saying it makes sense when you have a bunch of people paying into a single system, managed by the government (think of the unemployment system), that allows most of your basic health care needs to be met, your ambulance and emergency visits, doctors visits and hospital stays. If you have a population who aren't afraid to go to the doctor anymore to get something fixed before it becomes a problem you'll have a healthier general population and a more productive population. Canada really should cover basic dental as well but we don't. I don't understand that myself.Also, if we could get you to tighten your gun laws you'd find you'd have a better civilization as well, but one small step at a time.

Obama should come out and say "I was initially reluctant to accept the Republican plan regarding the mandate and tax. They had been proposing this for over a decade, but I felt it was unconstitutional. We accepted the tax mandate in the spirit of compromise, and now the Supreme Court has held that it is constitutional".

rigmort:My wife is an underwriting manager. She said that yes, they won't be able to turn you down or rider out for a previous condition or other reason.... but there's nothing that says they can't charge whatever they want. They are now being forced to "insure" against future problems AND current ones. Do you really think they won't cover their own asses?

PREMIUMS WILL GO UPBIGTIME FOR EVERYONE.

Health insurance is cheaper in a large company than in a small one. With a larger pool, premiums should go down.

Of course, we may need additional regulations to keep prices down. And, if insurance companies complain that they can't be profitable, they can shut themselves down and we can pass single payer.

NeoCortex42:Either way, I just want Obama to pressure Romney into explicitly stating what he'd replace ObamaCare with. Hey, if Romney has some amazing solution that would fix things even better, I'm willing to listen to it.

Romney has already explicitly stated his policy. He's going to do the exact opposite of whatever Obama would do, in all cases.

In fact, I'm pretty sure Romney is hoping that Obama will continue to live in the White House for the next four years and continue to make all the really difficult decisions, so that Romney knows will know which policies he should be opposed to.

It allows them to believe that they're important and did it all by their bootstraps. They don't have to think about how much of their success is built upon current and previous government programs that they yammer about, and that their usefulness is only because the people in power need breathing bodies to vote for them to make it look real.

(b) Such an analysis suggests that the shared responsibility payment may for constitutional purposes be considered a tax. The payment is not so high that there is really no choice but to buy health insurance; the payment is not limited to willful violations, as penalties for unlawful acts often are; and the payment is collected solely by the IRS through the normal means of taxation.

For those afraid that the government now has the power to do anything they want through raising specialized taxes, this part of the ruling seems to be important.

downpaymentblues:Obama should come out and say "I was initially reluctant to accept the Republican plan regarding the mandate and tax. They had been proposing this for over a decade, but I felt it was unconstitutional. We accepted the tax mandate in the spirit of compromise, and now the Supreme Court has held that it is constitutional".

From the beginning, I thought that "Don't ask, don't tell," was a step, a necessary, imperfect step, toward gays serving openly in the military.

The Affordable Care Act is a similar, necessary (since Congress wouldn't pass single-payer), imperfect step toward our joining the rest of the developed world in providing universal (single-payer) healthcare for its citizens.

I'm tempted to score you as a troll, but Poe's Law (and the fact that there's no shortage of people who actually believe this) compels me to respond:

That is some Grade A denial, my friend.People without insurance -- illegal, legal, tax-payers or no -- *already* get emergency medicine when they go to the hospital.We're *already* paying for it in higher premiums and hospital charges, making up for what they don't/can't pay.They don't get anything more, or less, no matter what we do to reform or ignore healthcare.

And under this very flawed ACA, we will all still pay *less* every time they can get preventative treatment rather than emergency treatment.The $40 catastrophic coverage that an otherwise-healthy twenty-something will 'have' to buy (as if they wouldn't anyway, if such plans existed) is massively, massively cheaper than the increased premiums they would be facing when they do become older, have kids and/or otherwise need to start paying for insurance.

Literally, the only people who "lose" under the ACA are the politicians who refused to allow Obama anything approaching a political victory and felt compelled to spread lies about it to justify their petty power play.

I want to say congrats to Mitt Romney for being the catalyst (Romneycare) that ultimately manifested itself into this historical and unprecedented ruling from the Supreme Court of the United States to the citizens of these United States of America..

AHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!!! The teabagger just turned on his favorite AM talk station a couple minutes ago!!!! HAHAHAAA!!!! Holy shiatballs, it's the most amazing thing I've ever heard!!! Dear f/ck, these people can't even form coherent thoughts right now!!!! This host is rambling off words that don't even make sentences, or even sentence-like word strings. I'm beside myself. I've seriously heard 4 year old children throw tantrums that were thought out better than this...... And he's f*cking nodding his head in agreement and muttering to himself.

GBB:david_gaithersburg: Has anyone here ever opted to purchase the COBRA offered by their employer? Bwahahahaha! Its now THE LAW suckhars.

As a matter of fact, Yes, I have. Disney (WDW) offers some of the cheapest premiums of any employer that is not the Federal Government. I can't remember the exact amount, but damn, was it cheap!! Most of the time, when you are offered COBRA, you pay the full amount and then discover how much your employer has been kicking in for you. I can only assume that because of how many employees they have, and they are unionized, the premiums are so cheap that Disney (WDW) doesn't chip in at all.

A+++++ Will do again.

But, yes, I know what you are getting at; COBRA is an unaffordable option for someone that is no longer employed.

which is where the exchanges and such come in. Hopefully they have a cheap HSA plan in there somewhere to cover folks who don't have employer insurance, but don't get sick often enough to need a traditional health care plan.

Serious Black:Paging The_Six_Fingered_Man: I have a question. Suppose you set up your withholding so that you owe, say, $500 on your income tax bill on April 15. Further suppose that you do not hold health insurance and are subject to the $695 payment. If you send the IRS $500 to try and cover your income tax bill but not any of the $695 shared responsibility payment, can the IRS use that $500 effectively as a down payment on the shared responsibility payment and then come after you for the $500 that you didn't pay on your other tax liability?

Sorry, The_Troll_Fingered_Man is now on suicide watch at his local mental ward after having all of his bullsh*t about how the mandate wasn't functionally identical to a 2% tax increase with an offsetting credit for people who buy health insurance proven completely wrong.

GhostFish:Years later, and the GOP is still getting farked over by Bush's actions.

The comments are Freeperville are lambasting him for appointing Roberts. I never thought it would happen, but the left and the right have come together on this glorious day and agreed that George W. Bush was a human shiatstain devoid of any redeeming value.

Thunderpipes:RolandGunner: Well, in the long run it's the best possible outcome if the law was going to be upheld. By changing the mandate penalty to a tax and, ruling out the commerce clause justification, the bill is upheld without issuing a blanket authorization for the federal government to force the purchase of goods and services.

But it just did. If Obama wants you to do something, you do it, or the feds tax you. That is force. Just wait until Pubs in the states start pushing something you don't like and enforce it with a tax..... Will you like it then?

You're kidding right? Half a million dollars for a head injury? I can't imagine my parents paying that. They just retired and their life savings are around that much. A lifetime of saving to pay for one accident... thats just wrong on every level.

/Parents had insurance anyway but the public hospital had a better head injury unit than the private one.